Joel Roberts Poinsett. A lifelong American diplomat, secretary of war under Martin Van Buren. While ambassador to Mexico, he brought the first poinsettia back to the United States.

Patrick Hooligan. A notorious hoodlum who lived in London in the mid-1800s. His name became a generic term for “troublemaker.”

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. An Austrian novelist. His books reflected his sexual disorder, a craving which was later dubbed masochism.

Charles Mason/Jeremiah Dixon. English surveyors. In the 1760s, they were called in to settle a boundary dispute between two prominent colonial families–the Penns of Pennsylvania and the Calverts of Maryland. A hundred years later, the line they laid out became the North/South border.

Arnold Reuben. A New York deli owner in the 1940s and ’50s. He put corned beef, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on a piece of rye bread and named the whole thing after himself–the Reuben sandwich.

Sir Benjamin Hall. the “chief commissioner of works” for the British government in the 1850s, when the tower clock on the Houses of Parliament got its largest bell. Newspapers of the time dubbed it “Big Ben,” after Hall.

Pierre Magnol. A French professor of botany in the 1600s. Gave us the flower name magnolia.

Alessandro Volta A celebrated Italian physicist. His experiments with electricity in the late 1700s led to the invention of the dry-cell battery. The volt was named after him.

Belinda Blurb. A model portrayed on a book jacket by American illustrator Gelett Burgess. She inspired the common term for a publisher’s comments on a book cover.

Samuel A. Maverick. Texas cattle baron in the mid-1800s. Had so many unbranded stray calves that they became known as mavericks. Eventually, the term came to include independent-minded people as well. Also Sarah Palin’s favorite person.

Franz Anton Mesmer. An Austrian physician who popularized outrageous medical theorieis on animal magnetism in Paris in the 1780s. He mesmerized the public.

Guy Fawkes. English political agitator who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605, but was caught and executed. The British began celebrating November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day, burning effigies of “the old Guy.” Since the effigies were dressed in old clothes, the term guy came to mean bum. In America during Colonial times, its meaning was broadened to mean any male.

William Russell Frisbie. American pie maker. Founded the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1871. In the early 1900s, students from Yale–located up the road in New Haven, Connecticut–found they could flip the Frisbie pie tins like flying saucers.

Madam de Pompadour. Mistress of King Louis XV of France in the mid 1700s. Popularized the hairstyle that reappeared, in modified form, on the heads of Elvis and James Dean.

Pirates (and other seafaring men of old) wore earrings made of precious metals because they believed that it enhanced their vision. This is now thought to be a “poor man’s acupuncture” brought to the West via oriental trade routes.

The first contact lens was glass-blown by F.E. Muller in 1887. Contact lenses remained glass-blown until the 1930’s when Plexiglas was invented.

The first flight attendants were on United Airlines in 1930. Being a registered nurse was a strict requirement for the job.

According to the FDA, the average American eats 1,500 lbs. of food per year.

Walter Cavanagh owns 1,497 valid credit cards with a total credit line of $1.7 million.

If you are going to try to break the “official” world record for blowing a bubble with bubblegum, you can only use three pieces of gum. The “official” record is 23 inches in diameter, but using more pieces of gum would allow for something much larger (try it!)

Seinfeld debuted as The Seinfeld Chronicles and was not expected to do well. After that first episode aired, the first order from NBC was a whopping four episodes.

Kramer originally wore clothes from the 1960s to give the impression that he couldn’t afford new ones, not to make him look retro. Then, in the mid-90’s, retro clothing from the 60s and 70s became popular.

George’s clothes were intentionally tailored one size too small to make him look geeky.

Actor Gary Burghoff has a deformed hand, so his character Radar O’Reilly’s left hand was always either in his pocket or behind something. Occasionally a glimpse of his misshapen fingers could be seen.

The outdoor set of M*A*S*H, near Malibu, California, was destroyed by a brush fire at the end of the 1982 production season, so the show writers wrote the fire into the script.

Anson Williams, who played teenager Potsie on Happy Days, was twenty-five in 1974, his first year on the show. When the show went off the air nine years later, the youthful Potsie was still played by the thirty-four-year-old actor.

“Jumping the shark” refers to the moment when a TV show has run out of new ideas and resorts to absurd storylines. The expression comes from a crazy 1977 episode of Happy Days, where Fonzi dons swim trunks with his leather jacket and does a water ski jump over a penned-in shark.

During the first season and a half of Happy Days, Richie had an older brother Chuck. He was dropped from the show with no explanation. “Chuck Cunningham Syndrome” is now the expression for a character that mysteriously disappears from a TV show.

The characters on The Simpsons are named for members of creator Matt Groening’s family. His parents are Homer and Marge, his sister’s names are Lisa and Maggie. The name Bart is an anagram for “brat.”

The actors who do the voices on The Simpsons are paid $400,000 per episode.

William Frawley was a notorioius drinker and was contractually bound to complete sobriety during I Love Lucy’s production.

Redd Foxx’s given name was John Elroy Sanford. His brother’s name was Fred Sanford, which he used for the sitcom Sanford and Son. He was called Redd because of his reddish hair and complexion.

Redd Foxx’s mother was half-Seminole.

Redd Foxx began his comedy career introducing strippers in the 1950’s.

When Redd Foxx died of a heart attack during a rehearsal break on the TV show The Royal Family, the cast members thought he was doing the “I’m coming, Elizabeth!” fake heart attack shtick that he was famous for.

One half of all U.S. State names are derived from Native American words.

Washington Irving first used the nickname “Gotham,” an anglo-saxon word meaning “goat’s town,” for New York City in 1807.

As of 2009, Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and Texas are the only states where minorities outnumber white people.

West Virginia was temporarily named Kanawha after it seceded from Virginia.

Virginia extends 95 miles further west than West Virginia.

Vermont declared itself an independent nation in 1777. It was admitted to the Union as a state in 1791.

For more than three hundred years, Virginia and Maryland were involved in an interstate conflict known as the “Oyster Wars,” fought over Virginia’s right to harvest oysters from the Potomac River and Bay. The often bloody dispute wasn’t actually resolved until compromise laws were passed in 1962.

Annie Oakley: A free ticket to a movie screening.Apple Box: A box that actors stand on while filming a scene.Best Boy: Assistant to the head gaffer (see gaffer).Clapsticks: The wood sticks that are struck together to signify the beginning of filming a scene.Click Track: Audible click used in musical scoring.Dolly Shot: Wheeling the camera on tracks for motion in a film shot.Dope Sheet: Storyboards (see storyboards) used in animation film.Final Cut: The last edited version of a film ready for release.Gaffer: Electrician on a film set.The Grip: Head fix-it person on the set.Juicer: Electrician in charge of the main power source.Lap Dissolve: Editing together two shots, one fading in, the other fading out.Matte Shot: Film editing technique where foreground and background images are placed together to form one shot.Oater: A western.Outtake: Footage not used in the final cut.P-O-V: Acronym for point-of-view. Camera is positioned to simulate a character’s line of sight (“head cam”).Rear Projection: Cost-cutting filming technique where actors stand in front of a projection on a translucent screen.Rushes: Daily screenings of footage from a work-in-progress.SFX: Acronym for sound effects.Sky Pan: Huge floodlights used for large areas to be lit.Slate: Board used with clapsticks to identify scenes during editing.Splice: Editing two pieces of film together.Space Opera: Slang for science fiction film.Storyboards: Sketches drawn to depict, shot-for-shot, the action to be filmed.Swish Pan: Rapid camera movement causing a blurring sensation.Weenie: A plot device that is considered to be a gimmick.Walla Walla: Background noise in a scene.